


Your Hands are Shaking

by almadeamla



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-21
Updated: 2019-01-21
Packaged: 2019-10-14 02:47:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17500130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/almadeamla/pseuds/almadeamla
Summary: Written for a kinkmeme prompt long ago: “AU where Shane was always a girl. Everything in her life stays the same.” Set during 2.03.





	Your Hands are Shaking

**Author's Note:**

> Importing more old work.

Shane swings the bags out of the truck. She has a heartbeat in her ankle and her head. She puts all her weight down and bears it.

Everyone runs out to meet her. The light from inside the house spills out orange.

Rick, desperate and gray like a corpse. She can’t look him in the face, doesn’t want to know, but has to, asks

“Carl?” Carl’s what matters. All that matters. The little boy that’s like her son. The little boy she would die for. The little boy she’d made others die for.

Otis and his chivalry that made him dead. She remembers. _Go on without me_ and _I won’t leave a woman behind_. His choice. Her decision. Her arm vibrates with the recoil of her gun.

Rick nods, takes the bags from her. Hershel clutches them and says Otis like a question.

“No,” she whispers, eyes down, and when she speaks, minutes of silence, it’s to Rick.

“He said—” she stops, swallows, and it feels like there’s gravel rattling in her chest. She can feel the pebbles and the stones. “Ladies first, go on, I’ll cover you. So that’s what I did. I went and I kept going and when I turned around he was…”

Shane holds her breath. Her mouth trembles and her eyes feel tight and hot.

Rick uses his hands to pull her to him. Arm across her shoulders, palm cupped at the back of her neck. She smells his sweat and Carl’s blood. She feels the heat of his body through the thinness of their cotton shirts.

“Thank you,” Rick says, broken. His voice is hoarse with all that gratitude and all that love. She tips her chin into his neck and lets him hold her. She doesn’t cry.

She locks eyes with Lori, hunched over on the rocker, hands wrung into twists in her lap. Lori nods at her, approval, and doesn’t smile. Shane will take what she can get.

Later, Carl better, a miracle, good she and Hershel have done, she lets the steam billow thick around her. The humidity and the mist. She runs fingers over her body, the bruises, bicep to clavicle to breast. Purple blooms like a flower on her hip. Her elbow is an ugly patch of red. She’d hit the ground hard and kept on running. She feels too full for blood.

Then she sees the patch of skin above her ear. She starts rattling through the cupboards, frantic, because they’ll know.

She finds what she’s looking for—razor and scissors. She could comb over. She could braid. She could part down the middle. But she sees it and remembers Otis’ hand grasping at her head, a whole handful, and his screaming, shouting, while she left him for the dead. She picks up the scissors.

Her curls flutter into the sink like ribbons. She cuts, jagged, crooked, the metallic shink of shears connecting as her hair falls away. The pretty hair her momma gave her. The hair Lori had loved to play with, just her and Shane and Carl. Shane sitting between Lori’s open legs in the tent, Carl watching as Lori made different styles and held them in place with their stash of rubber bands. Carl twisting her curls around his fingers nights he came to her, sat with her around the fire, cuddled in her lap.

When she’s down to a boycut, disheveled flapper, she clicks on the electric razor. Her hair hasn’t been this short in years, not since just after high school, not since her rebellious phase. She and Rick had got the same haircut together, laughing, for the police academy. It’s a strange feeling, the buzzcut. She finishes and the stubble rasps across her skull. It’s dark and violent. It’s not the look of a nice or pretty girl. It reminds her of girls she’s dated, the butchest ones, and she wonders what Rick and everyone will say. Girls don’t just shave their heads without a reason.

Practicality, she thinks. Almost got it caught jumping out a window. Got in her eyes and she couldn’t see.

“There you are,” Rick finds her after her shower. Tucked in an old pair of Patricia’s overalls.

She doesn’t feel clean.

“That’s new,” Rick tells her, hand from her forehead to the base of her skull. “It’s a good look for you, though.” His eyes are deep, dull. He doesn’t mean it. He’d always liked her long hair better. Once upon a time he’d put his hands in it to kiss her. She sees his concern and his fear. “Makes you look tough.”

“I thought it was kinda dikey.” She laughs and Rick joins her, fatigued curl in his mouth. He’s pale under his tan. She keeps laughing but doesn’t feel it. The echo is hollow in her throat.

“That too.”

“Asshole,” she says. She leans back in her chair. She’s afraid to close her eyes.

“Get some sleep.” Rick stands, wobbling, unsteady legs and knocking knees. She puts out a hand to steady him. He holds it, clammy fingers and wide palm. She can’t, not again, Rick and Lori, and she’s the one who lets him go.

“You too, brother.”

Sleep takes its own sweet time to come to her. And when it does, she’s too tired to feel guilt when she remembers Otis’ scream.


End file.
